


to all a good night

by renecdote



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Christmas, Dick gets his christmas eventually, Dreams, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I'm sorry I tried not to make it angsty, Injury, Memories, but I did hurt Dick oops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 04:46:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17196785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renecdote/pseuds/renecdote
Summary: “Hey,” he says, voice rough and quiet. “Did I miss Christmas?”Bruce shakes his head. He squeezes Dick’s hand. “Don’t worry about that. How are you feeling?”Dick is determined to make it home and spend Christmas as a family, life-threatening injuries be damned.





	to all a good night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MildlyRebelliousMint](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MildlyRebelliousMint/gifts).



> Title and quotes that Bruce is reading are from A Visit from St Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore.
> 
> This is a bit of a mix of your prompts but the main one I was working with was 'A crude attempt to celebrate the holidays'.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!!

Blood runs between Dick’s fingers and paints the snow red. He stumbles doggedly forward in a haze of pain and blood loss, driven up the stone steps of Wayne Manor by a promise that he would be home for Christmas.

It’s Christmas Eve and Dick is determined to keep that promise. Steadily bleeding bullet wound be damned.

He collapses just inside the open door, flurries of snow blowing in around him. He tries to crawl forward, to call out, but the room tilts and whirls, dizzying black blurring across Wayne Manor’s brightly lit entry hall. Dick stares up at the glittering chandelier. He made it. He made it home—and he’s not even late for Christmas.

“Master Dick!”

Dick blinks up at Alfred’s fuzzy face. “Alf…” he slurs. “M’rry Chris…”

“Alfred? Dick!” Bruce’s panicked voice drowns him out. There’s a clatter of footsteps down the stairs.

Dick coughs and tastes iron. He tries to keep his eyes open, tries to say it’s not that bad. But it is that bad, he’s bleeding out on the Manor’s shining tiles and he knows it.

“Stay with us, Master Dick,” he hears Alfred say.

And Dick smiles and tries to nod and then—

Alfred pushes down on his side and Dick screams

—then the darkness swallows him. 

\- - - -

Dick drifts. He drifts and he dreams of Christmas ghosts past and present.

\- - - -

The tree is already up. Dick drops his backpack with a thump in the doorway and stares into the living room. There are several in the mansion, but this is the only one Dick has ever seen used. Couches worn down from many movie nights, blankets thrown carelessly over chairs, a stain on the coffee table that makes guilt wriggle in Dick’s stomach. And now there’s a giant fir taking up one corner of the room.

Anger and disappointment war in Dick’s chest. Footsteps approach from the direction of the study down the hall just as anger is winning out.

“Hey chum, how was-”

Dick turns, jabbing a fist at Bruce’s arm. The punch doesn’t connect, Dick hadn’t really expected it to, but Bruce looks as startled as if it did. He looks down at Dick’s small arm held in his like he’s not sure why it’s there.

“You said we’d go together!”

Bruce frowns, eyebrows pulling together. It makes him look older, more like the serious man in the Wayne family portrait.

Dick blinks back tears.  _Angry_  tears. He’s not going to cry just because of a stupid tree.

“You said we could pick out a tree together,” Dick says, turning away so Bruce doesn’t see the wobble of his lip.

Bruce looks past him into the room and understanding smoothes the frown from his face.

“Alfred?” he calls. “Did you order a tree?”

Oh. Dick bites his lip. “You didn’t go pick one out while I was at school?”

“Of course not,” Bruce says. He tousles Dick’s hair. “I promised, didn’t I chum?”

\- - - -

“Dick?”

Bright light searing through his head. Pain like a knife stabbing behind his eyes, in his chest, carving down his abdomen, his arms.

“Come on, Dick, you need to wake up.”

Dick tries to open his mouth, to speak, to scream. His jaw is locked shut. He can’t move, can’t make a sound.

“You promised Christmas would be good this year. You promised we’d all be together as a family. You  _promised_.”

A burst of colours. Red and green and twinkling blue, like tangled strings of Christmas lights. They pulse, burning fiery, burning together until they’re too much, too bright, god it hurts—

\- - - -

“Shit, ow.”

Dick inspects the blood welling up from the cut on his finger. It runs down his hand and drips onto the shards of shattered ornament he’s kneeling over. Bright red on sparkling green.

 _Festive_ , Dick thinks drily.

He leaves the broken bauble and gets up to find a bandaid. When he returns he finds the shards of coloured glass in a neat pile and Cass sitting on his couch. Dick looks at the window, still shut tight with a dusting of snow on the ledge. Cass smiles.

“Key,” she says. “From Alfred.”

Ah.

“I told him I’d be there tomorrow,” Dick says. Work permitting. Night work permitting as well.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” Cass says. She’s not looking at him, attention on the tiny plastic tree lit up in the corner of Dick’s apartment.

“I know,” Dick says. “You should be at the Manor.”

Cass’s eyes are piercing. “So should you.”

\- - - -

Exhaustion weighs down on Dick like a blanket made from lead. He struggles against it. There’s something important… he’s slept too long, he’s going to miss it, he promised…

“Shh,” a voice whispers. Gentle fingers comb through Dick’s hair.

Somewhere, soft music is playing. Christmas carols, Dick thinks. Or maybe he hopes.

The exhaustion presses down. Dick gives up the fight.

\- - - -

“O come all ye faithful,” the radio croons.

Alfred hums half the tune as he bustles around the kitchen. Christmas baking, he said when they started, must be done with Christmas carols playing. That was how the Christmas spirit got into the food.

Dick doesn’t know about that. It didn’t stop the gingerbread cookies from being slightly burnt. Dick’s tongue pokes out as he concentrates on tracing lines of icing around the edges. One tray of green Christmas trees are already done, the icing setting on a rack while they wait for the gingerbread men to join them.

“Very good, Master Dick,” Alfred says. He peers over Dick’s shoulder to inspect the handiwork of his young baking helper.

Dick looks up, the fluffy end of his Santa hat flopping into his eyes. He pushes it back, fingers leaving a smudge of white icing on his temple.

“Some of my lines are crooked,” he says.

“Mm. Not to matter,” Alfred assures him, patting Dick’s shoulder. “They will taste just as fine as the others.”

Dick goes back to icing. He’s putting the final touches on the last gingerbread man when Bruce stumbles into the kitchen, rubbing fatigue off his face. He stands by the table, frowning down at all the gingerbread cookies like they’re pieces of a puzzle.

“You made all these?” Bruce asks.

Dick nods. “They’re for tomorrow.”

“Hm.” Bruce leans closer, voice lowered conspiratorially as he says to Dick, “Maybe we should try them, just to make sure they’re alright.”

A gingerbread tree disappears off the tray and into Bruce’s mouth.

“Bruce!” Dick protests but he’s grinning. “You’ve got to wait ‘til Christmas—Bruce!”

\- - - -

There’s a voice on the edge of Dick’s consciousness. Deep, lilting, familiar. It moves like waves, rolling closer then drifting away just when Dick thinks it’s going to break over his head. He struggles against the cotton in his mind, the cinder blocks weighing down his limbs.

Bruce. It’s Bruce’s voice. Words become sentences, rhymes moving like music through the air, brought to life by Bruce’s voice. He’s… reading?

“-chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, and I laughed when-”

With consciousness comes awareness that everything hurts. Dick groans. He shifts, trying to escape the pain, but moving just makes it hurt more.

Bruce’s reading cuts off and the book is cast aside as he leans forward. “Dick?”

Dick peels his eyes open.

“Hey,” he says, voice rough and quiet. “Did I miss Christmas?”

Bruce shakes his head. He squeezes Dick’s hand. “Don’t worry about that. How are you feeling?”

Dick’s heart sinks. So he did miss Christmas. His chest aches from something other than the gunshot wound that has been neatly stitched and bandaged.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Tears fill his eyes and he squeezes them shut. It’s just—the pain, the drugs he’s on, the memories slipping away from him now that he’s awake.

“What’s wrong?” Concern sharpens Bruce’s voice.

“I worried you, all of you,” Dick says, voice thick, “and it’s  _Christmas_.”

Christmas is supposed to be joyous. It’s supposed to be about spending time with family, not sitting a bedside vigil because Dick was stupid enough to get shot. Stupid enough to think he’d be fine if he could just make it home in time for Christmas.

Bruce hugs him, pulling Dick forward until his forehead rests against his dad’s neck. It makes his side throb, his breath short, but Dick doesn’t care. He lifts his arms and hugs back.

“It’s okay,” Bruce says against the top of Dick’s head. “You’re okay, that’s what matters.”

“I’m sorry,” Dick says again.

“It’s alright.” Bruce’s lips press into Dick’s hair. “We can have Christmas when you’re better.”

\- - - -

Dick settles onto the couch with a sigh. The living room is lit only by the glow of the lights on the Christmas tree in the corner. Still up, even though they’re closer to New Year’s Day than Christmas Day now.

“Tim and Cass helped Alfred put the lights up,” Bruce says. “They wanted to wait until you woke up to do the ornaments though.”

“They didn’t have to,” Dick says, but the emotion swelling in his chest is probably painted clearly across his face, betraying how happy he is that they put Christmas on hold for him. Happy, but also bitter. They shouldn’t have had to. Dick swallows back that bitterness. Christmas—however belated—is a time for happiness not bitterness.

Presents are still piled under the tree, no sign that any of them have been opened. Dick stares at them in wonder, shaken out of his thoughts only when Tim sits down on the couch beside him.

“Here,” he says, passing Dick a mug of tea.

Dick smiles. “Thanks, Timmy.”

Cass sits down on the floor on Dick’s other side, three boxes printed with Christmas scenes in front of her. She opens the lid of one to peer inside then passes it up to Dick. Another goes to Tim, then she begins sorting through the ornaments in the third one herself. There are fewer than in Tim and Dick’s boxes; it’s only her second Christmas as a Wayne, but her collection will soon grow.

Dick digs through the box on his lap with one hand, gently pulling out the ornaments that catch his eye. Some of them are fancy, sparkling glass worth more than Dick could guess, but a lot more are simple, colourful things. Some homemade from school art projects, but not many. Most of the decorations Dick made at school were gifted to Bruce and Alfred.

“May I?”

Dick looks up and finds Bruce standing in front of him, hand out for the ornament Dick is holding. It’s a penguin, an ugly glittery thing that makes Dick smile. A remnant of Dick’s first Christmas at Wayne Manor, an in-joke about their Batman and Robin adventures that Dick had found endlessly funny when he was nine. Now he finds it only sweet. He hands to penguin to Bruce and watches as his dad hangs it on the tree.

Cass and Tim take turns putting Dick’s ornaments on the tree between their own and soon it is fully decorated.

Alfred joins them shortly afterwards, setting down trays of gingerbread, shortbread, rum balls—all the Christmas treats Dick could dream of. Alfred sits down in one of the armchairs beside the fire and Bruce takes the other, settling down with a book in his hands. He opens it, the pages worn with love from a long-standing Christmas Eve tradition.

“Wait,” Dick says, looking around at all of them. “I almost forgot—Merry Christmas.”

A chorus of warm “Merry Christmas”s echo back at him. Dick smiles. If he doesn’t look at the date on his phone, if he doesn’t move too much and awaken the pain in his side, he can almost pretend that it really is Christmas Eve.

Bruce clears his throat and begins to read. “'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…”

 


End file.
